Residents of San Victor Village in the Corozal District, apparently angered over the loss of reported contraband goods and the shooting of one of their own in a confrontation with Customs officials this afternoon, took matters into their own hands and later stormed the Douglas Police Station, in the Orange Walk District, in an attempt to get back the goods.
Full details of the incident are yet to come, as Orange Walk Town police and Douglas police continue to investigate.
However, Amandala can confirm that a young resident of the village was shot in the face. He has been taken to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital in Belize City.
In this evening’s newscast LOVE FM News identified the shooting victim as Onario Oba, 21, of San Victor. He had accompanied his friends to Douglas, only to be shot in the face.
According to one of Oba’s friends, when they attempted to park their vehicle next to the Customs vehicle, they were ordered to move it at gunpoint. A crowd gathered and officials resorted to firing in the air and then into the crowd, hitting Oba, who, his mother told the radio station, was not involved in the contraband trade.
Oba was immediately taken to the Northern Regional Hospital in town and later to the KHMH, having reportedly lost “a lot of blood,” according to his mother.
According to a source we contacted that is close to the investigation, a raid was conducted this afternoon in the area adjoining Douglas and San Victor, located a mile apart by road and three miles apart on the Rio Hondo, Belize’s border with Mexico.
Amandala was told that the Douglas constable was out in the afternoon, attending a meeting in Orange Walk.
The Customs men reportedly took 2 dories with an unknown quantity of goods suspected to be contraband to the Douglas Police Station.
Shortly thereafter, about three dozen angry residents of San Victor arrived, allegedly stormed the station, threatened to burn it down, and hacked away at equipment inside the station with their machetes until they found the dories and hauled them away.
The attack happened in the presence of the Douglas constable’s distraught wife, who informed her husband via phone of what was taking place. She was not harmed.
According to our source, the constable was sent back to Douglas and arrived just in time to catch the contrabandists trying to get away with the dories. They have reportedly been detained.